L'actualité du dopage

Innuendo clouds cyclists

09/11/2000 - Austin 360 - Suzanne Halliburton & John Maher

Extraits

A year ago, when Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France, he had to battle doping innuendo almost as hard as he did other cyclists to get to the finish line at the Champs Elysees. It seemed that no one in France wanted to believe that an athlete recovering from advanced cancer could come back and win their grueling event.

Now, three months after his second Tour championship, the Austin resident and his U.S. Postal Service team have been targeted by speculation that the team may have used performance-enhancing chemicals in the grueling marathon cycling race.

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"What's going on in France is that it's sort of fashionable to talk about doping and cycling," Armstrong said Wednesday. "They want to keep the story alive. The logical people to go after are me and U.S. Postal.

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Frankie Andreu, a long-time teammate of Armstrong's, said the disposal of the team's medical waste was done according to French procedure.

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"What I will add to this is that U.S. Postal Service, along with many other teams in the Tour, hire a professional disposal unit to properly dispose of used medicine and tools.

"The team has an orange bin, like in the doctor's office, where they put everything used. The disposal unit shows up -- I'm not sure when or how often -- and professionally removes the bin to properly dispose of it according to French law."

Armstrong said he has heard of actovegin, but that he nor any of his teammates have used the drug.

"It's just weird," Armstrong said of the reports. "When you take into consideration that we're not even talking about a banned substance, and the fact that the (inquiry) is so late, something's not right."